


Revel in the Parenthetical

by dashielldeveron



Series: extremely married [1]
Category: Red Letter Media, RedLetterMedia RPF
Genre: F/M, current mike, extremely married, slice of mcfuckin' life, soft baby, there's a cat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-02-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:20:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22834681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dashielldeveron/pseuds/dashielldeveron
Summary: What's toast between lovers?
Relationships: Mike Stoklasa/Reader
Series: extremely married [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1675645
Comments: 6
Kudos: 35





	Revel in the Parenthetical

“Go on,” said Mike, standing on the edge of the fireplace to hold the cat up to the print of _Landscape with the Fall of Icarus_ , but with a tiny _Enterprise_ painted in the sky in the corner, “Get it. You can do it.”

Shaking your head, you gave one last stir to his coffee. “You want the cat to ruin the painting?”

Mike turned, his wool socked-feet catching on the hearth. “There’s a bug. She can kill it,” he said, shaking the cat for emphasis.

Letting the kitchen door swing shut behind you, you approached and sat in front of the fire, your joints creaking, and you lifted Mike’s coffee to him. “You need at least one hand for this.”

“Fine,” he said, stepping down, releasing the cat after kissing her little forehead, and groaning to ease himself onto the hearth next to you. He accepted his cup and eyed the plate of toast you set between you. “You didn’t get any?”

“ _Some_ of us have obligations tomorrow morning and can’t afford to drink coffee at eleven-thirty at night,” you said, and you scooted closer to him and slinked your arm around his bicep, squeezing it before resting your forehead there. “Not that it matters. You’d be late, anyway.”

Mike took a sip and let out a gasp at the heat. “I’ve been thinking about stealing Rich’s idea.”

“Which one?”

“About sleeping over at the studio whenever I’ve got to be there early,” he said, placing his cup aside at a distance.

“Oh, but then I’d miss you. Well,” you said, jerking your head to the side, “I’d miss my personal space heater.”

“Grow a healthy layer of down like the rest of us, dammit.”

“No, Mike, I swear—my back is to the fire, and you’re still the warmest thing in here,” you said, reaching for one of the drawstrings on his hoodie and tugging on it, just to get the why-bother-doing-that nose wrinkle.

Mike took your hand, flicked his hoodie string over his shoulder, and brought your hand to his face (you rubbed your thumb over his stubble). “You’re still the hottest.” He licked his lips, grinning toothily. “What, no reaction? Laugh at my joke.”

Narrowing your eyes, you said, “I’ve come to expect a higher calibre of punnery from you. Hey!” You snatched your hand away when he stuck out his tongue to lick it.

“You’ve come to a lot of things by now, darlin’.” Mike reclaimed your hand to kiss your fingers once, twice, while he reached for a piece of toast, which he placed in your flattened hand once he was done kissing it.

“Mostly Led Zepplin and the dulcet tones of Leonard Nimoy,” you said, and you nibbled on the crust, licking jelly so that it didn’t run onto the rug.

“Leonard Nimoy is essential to any romance,” said Mike, gesturing with his own toast, “Just ask T’Pring. _That_ went well.”

“I’m not gonna lie and say that it wouldn’t be attractive if you had to go through some sort of—oh, don’t tell me,” you said, slapping your forehead with more force than you meant, “It’s that thing that means _blood fever_ and sounds like _Krakow_ but isn’t?”

“ _Plak tow_. Close. You’re learning,” said Mike, smiling as he reached over to ruffle your hair, but it wasn’t condescending; somehow, it made you feel safe. “But you’re probably thinking about the whole cycle of _pon farr_ , which is the whole Vulcan mating period. The _plak tow_ came at the end of it, and I could get out of it by meditating for days, not just by having sex.”

Grinning, you scratched the cat behind her ears when she plodded towards the fire and stretched out behind the both of you.

“Or remember Christine Chapel? _Remember her?_ She was in love with Spock for a while. Or in “This Side of Paradise” or “All Our Yesterdays” when—”

“They sure do come across sex pollen a lot,” you said, taking another bite. “You’d think they’d know how to recognise it by now.” You set your toast on the plate and brushed crumbs off your palms. “I could pay more attention to _Star Trek_ if we stopped fucking to it.”

Mike sank his teeth into his toast, afterwards having to free a clump from the gap between his canine tooth and molar. “That’s probably true, but it’s more for my benefit than yours. I need to hear Leonard Nimoy to get my rocks off.”

_That_ you laughed through your nose at, leaving your nose burning. Mike looked satisfied with himself, ducking his head and trying to stifle a closed-mouth smile. “I make a perfectly good Beatles sex playlist, and it’s been gathering dust—”

“A playlist can’t gather _dust_ —”

“I was being metaphorical, Mike,” you said, and you slid your arm around him, scrunching the fabric of his sleeve and getting close enough to tilt your knees to rest them in his lap.

“No, that’s not good enough. Closer.” Mike pulled one of your knees over his legs, and you adjusted until you were straddling him against the hearth. He lazily wrapped an arm around your waist to hold you to his chest, and in the scant space between you, his other hand splayed flat against your bare stomach, inching your shirt upwards to fall back over his fingers. You jolted at the initial cold (and his mouth quirked upwards; what a prick. How could his hands always be frigid when the rest of him was a fucking sauna?) and, after flinching away once, eased into his palm. He tapped his fingers against your midriff before relaxing them again.

Mike planted a dry kiss to your cheek before pulling you into a full hug, dragging his scratchy cheek against yours in the process.

Taking a deep breath, you closed your eyes, the light of the fire still flickering through your eyelids. You burrowed the best you could into a comfortable place between his neck and hoodie, and you inhaled. You hated that the basic bastard Old Spice worked like hell on you (but it also meant you could just wear his deodorant when he’s away and fool your brain into thinking he’s right behind you).

Mike always made you feel so small and safe, you know? Nothing bad the two of you couldn’t fix would happen while he was around. You weren’t quite certain why, but being around Mike was like having your own personal…knight? No, that’s fucking dumb. That’s _so_ fucking dumb. Go somewhere else. Okay.

Mike’s voice echoed in your head: Remember _The Great Mouse Detective_? Remember it? When you watched it as a kid, you always had complete faith in whatever the mouse who-is-totally-not-Sherlock-Holmes (he actually lived below Sherlock; _fucking_ hell), and he always seemed to be in control, even when the situation was fucking grim, and could get out of it with some crazy brain work. Probably wouldn’t be good to tell Mike you compared him to a cartoon mouse belonging to the Mouse. Maybe later.

You opened your eyes, following a spark rise before falling onto the cat, who made a displeased _meow_ at it. Mike always had the air of having everything under control. He had a way out. He would weave his way through a situation with wit enough to fucking dazzle you with whatever he’s going to say; he took the time to slow down to shoot you a look out of the corner of his eye that meant _Watch this._

(One of your all-time, favourite memories was preceded by this: they’d been filming a spotlight BoTW, and you’d been off-camera, silently checking the sound. Mike had looked right at you, making sure you noticed, before making a terrible, _horrible_ quip at Rich’s expense. Too much footage had been wasted by their laughing fit, so after they said they’d cut it, you had taken drink requests so that they wouldn’t have to get up. You’d slid Rich his diet coke and Jay his pumpkin beer, and when you gave Mike his Moon Man, he’d grabbed your wrist before you could pull away and kissed the inside of it.

When Mike showed you the footage later, you saw how you’d had a look of softened surprise on your fucking vermillion face, how Jay’s eyebrows had shot towards his hairline but otherwise concealed all other emotion by taking a drink, and how Rich had laughed under his breath and had shaken his head.)

You threaded your fingers through his hair on this nape of his neck and stroked the bare skin past his hairline with your thumb; Mike shivered and let out an involuntary _oh!_ and moved the hand under your shirt to grip your hip harder than necessary—the other joined to snake upwards between your shoulder blades beneath your shirt—after which, the hand on your hip briefly left its position to yank the fabric down your back again so that you wouldn’t get chilly.

(Cold hands, warm heart.)

“Someone called me by my maiden name today,” you said—mewling suddenly, because Mike turned to press his open mouth where your jaw met your neck and _sucked_ , “She—she corrected herself afterwards, but it’s—it’s really great when new people struggle to say _Stoklasa_.”

“Welcome to my life,” said Mike.

“Oh, the woes of my baby Czechoslovakian,” you said, leaning back in his lap to look him in the eye, “People can’t pronounce his name.”

Dragging his hand down your back, tapping his fingers down your skin along the way, he lifted it to your chin and shifted into cupping your cheek with his thumb on your lower lip. His eyes flickered from yours to your lips, where he rubbed his thumb back and forth, and he curled his own lips inwards, biting them. “Czechoslovakia was dissolved in 1993. I believe it’s the Czech Republic now.”

You had to consciously make an effort to stop grinning enough to kiss his thumb (he slid it to the corner of your smile after). “Either way, you’re my Czech wreck.”

“You’ve been holding that one back for a while, haven’t you?” Mike’s warm eyes were bright. “Thought of it ten minutes ago?”

“Been in my arsenal for weeks now. _I_ was proud,” you said.

“I’m proud of you, darlin’; just please don’t say it around the guys. They’d corrupt it.”

“Must I remind you that ‘the _rec_ in _Pre-Rec_ stood for _rectum_?’ You’ve done your fair share of corruption.”

Mike laughed, tilting his head back. “I’ve done my job corrupting _you_ ,” he said. He pinched your hip and traced the bone jutting out there, and then he lowered his other hand to your chin, moving it to hold your gaze, while he guided your hips to roll against him, twice.

(Having Mike’s attention completely low-key freaked you out, especially at first. He was sharp and quick to critique, and he caught every detail. At the very beginning, it had been as if you were in the world’s most critical spotlight, whose opinion you could never guess and would make or break you.

You’d broken eye contact all too often, until he’d placed his index finger on your jawline and had turned your head back towards himself.

“I’m scary,” Mike had said, the corner of his mouth twitching when you’d glanced at your lap; he’d moved his thumb to your chin to direct your stare again. “I’m very fuckin’ scary. Is that what you think?”

You’d shaken your head the best you could, but his hand had kept you facing him. “You’re _intimida_ —”

“Does it bother you that all my attention is on you?” He’d licked his lips, visibly chapped from the Milwaukee winter. “Do you _object_ that I think you’re worth paying attention to?”

Blinking profusely to not look him in the eye, you’d sniffed and swallowed uneasily. Mike had sighed and reached out to brush hair behind your ear (but failed and ended up just curling his fingers around your ear for no reason), letting his hand linger so that he could cup your face, tilting it up towards his.

“You’re not doing anything wrong. I don’t look away, because nothing can distract me when you’re around. I’ve never seen anything like you,” he’d said, “and I don’t want to miss a thing.”)

“Break. We’re moving this to the couch,” said Mike, ignoring your immediate scowl and affecting his voice with a tinny lilt. “I’m almost an elderly. Got to protect my joints. My bones, ooh, my bones.”

You slid off of him, your knees aching as they hit hearthstone. “All right,” you said, picking up the toast plate, “An aside before we do: you mentioned the gang. I haven’t seen them as a group in a long-ass time. I mean, I’ve seen Rich and Karin recently, but I haven’t gotten to experience the full, group dynamic in a while.” You leant towards the coffee table, taking two steps on your knees and reaching to rest the plate on it. “Jack and Lisa haven’t had a game night in a while; maybe we could host one? The eight-foot Risk board would be the pièce de résistance, if you—”

Mike took the opportunity to slap your ass, _hard_ , (you jolted, dropping the plate on the table with a clatter) and then had the nerve to lace his fingers together and rest his hands on his stomach, looking all innocent.

“The problem with hosting,” said Mike, twiddling his thumbs, tapping the pads together, “is that we can’t leave early. There is no escape.”

You rubbed the spot he slapped before standing, and you offered your hand to him to help him. Mike took the time to swat the cat away from sticking her head in his coffee mug before accepting it, each of you wrapping your hand around the other’s wrist as you pulled him up.

“Forgot about that. You’re right.” You eased your hand from his wrist to his hand, leading him to the couch. “I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but we could go see a movie.”

“Nothing’s showing that we didn’t already see for work,” said Mike, and he sat and propped his feet up on the coffee table, plopping an arm around you.

“There’s the biopic on George Harrison coming out next week.”

Mike raised an eyebrow. “Pre-, post, or during the Beatles?”

“Post,” you said, placing a hand on his stomach and snuggling into his shoulder, “It’s supposed to open on that Delaney and Bonnie and Friends tour when he wrote “My Sweet Lord,” but I figure that might be footage for the opening credits. It’ll probably start the day _All Things Must Pass_ is released.”

Mike hummed and retracted his arm, moving instead to lay you down on the couch. “Jay isn’t interested in anything other than his synthwave shit and the Talking Heads. I doubt Rich’ll be into it; he’s not much of a music guy outside of the Doors.”

“So, it’ll just be us. Sue me,” you said, shrugging with effort now that Mike was partially on top of you. “It’s also approved by Dhani, so the movie’s got _that_ going for it, if nothing else.”

“It could still be terrible. I don’t wanna waste any more time at the movies than I have to.”

You squirmed underneath him, smiling as he finally shifted his full weight onto you, aside from what weight he had on his elbow next to your head. “We could make out during it.”

Mike grinned, holding his tongue between his teeth. “Now, why would I spend thirty bucks to do what I could do for free in a sanitary environment?”

With soft eyes, you arched your back enough to wrap your arms around his neck and leaned in to kiss him—two fingers on your jawline guided your head back onto the couch and looking off to the fireplace. Letting your arms drop, you felt very exposed, almost naked, with your eye line directed away from his heady gaze on the thin muscle protruding from the rest your neck.

He dragged his fingers down your neck, cold callouses and short nails tracing the tendons, swirling to circle your larynx (you swallowed; it bobbed under his touch), and then walked them to the inner ridge of your collarbone. His middle followed your collarbone to your shoulder, where he drew a couple of circles before sweeping back to the inner ridge.

“Touch me for _real_ , you coward,” you said, keeping your head towards the fire, as he’d directed, “This is—” (Mike plopped his palm flat on your boob; you laughed through your nose.) “My throat’s going dry from how gentle you’re being.”

“That’s because you’re so damn sensitive.” By the end of the sentence, his hot breath diffused across your skin, and his mouth opened and closed behind your ear. The hand not ceremoniously planted on your tit came up to the hair on the back of your neck; he tugged at it in thin bunches, barely above the roots, only a few strands at a time—not the normal hair pulling, but maybe more of just an empathetic sort of—okay, it was Mike. You didn’t know. It was kind of nice, no matter what it meant. “You complain, but it’s working.”

“Okay, yeah, it is,” you said, rolling your eyes, but before you finished the revolution, Mike’s mouth was on yours (he missed your mouth at first and overshot, his lips going around most of your upper lip, especially since you’d opened your mouth on contact. Subsequently fixed).

This dumbass motherfucker, with his dumbass fucking perfect mouth, the way his dumbass body rested on you made you feel so fucking warm and secure (he’d been hesitant for the longest time to relax and put his whole weight on you, despite your encouragement and your impulsive entreaty for him to fucking smother you), the stupid fucking taste of strawberry jelly (and worse: the way you smiled into the kiss when you realised), an absolutely ridiculous, self-satisfied hum when your lips chased his once he pulled away (he refused and smirked instead) —oh, he’s dumb. He’s such a dumbass.

His slow blink was too long for his honeyed eyes to be out of your view, but they’re half-lidded as they slid, almost oozing, down your body. “Spread those legs for me, darlin’.”

(Exposure. Vulnerability.

Being around Mike, letting him in to all your secrets and how you thought, down to your opinions on admittedly trash movies, had worn and scratched you raw, until your psyche’d been sanded with his intrusions, questions, and judgments, leaving you nothing but honest.

Defenceless.

The fear connected to felling every wall had only resurfaced once: the first time he’d lain between your legs, spreading them wider than was comfortable to wrap around him. Made you feel bare. Unprotected.

How embarrassing.

[Embarrassment that only flickered across the mind for a few moments, but it was multi-layered. From the first time you met him to the confirmation at that moment, Mike had always been the epitome of Big Dick Energy. The conglomeration of different aspects of his charisma bleeding into the air around him was fucking attractive _and_ exhausting. Not to mention that life-changing photo Macaulay Culkin had posted on his instagram, the one looking up at Mike on a ladder. A normal picture at first, not exactly flattering for his hairline, but then you noticed that a bulge from the profile of his jeans wasn’t his other leg but his _cock_ , and you’d had to put down your phone and think about life for a while.])

“Legs are already spread, Mike. Can’t spread ‘em much farther on a couch,” you said.

“ _Spreadier_ , then,” he said, and he hooked a hand under your knee, bending it towards your chest.

“God, you’re so hot when you get all pedantic on me,” you said, leaning up to kiss his neck, to nip at it, to feel his pulse under your tongue.

He gasped (incredulous, how-dare-you) when you pinched his nipple through his shirt, twisting it, and said, “All right, now your shirt’s coming off.”

“Fine by me.” You reached for the hem of your shirt. “Go get a condom in the meantime?”

“Actually,” Mike said, plopping his chin between your boobs before you could move the fabric over them, “Want to see a magic trick?”

You grinned, teeth biting into your lower lip. “Dazzle me, baby.”

Mike made eye contact before plunging his arm deep between couch cushions, fumbling around until he exhumed the tin foil of a wrapped condom. Hardly containing himself, he bapped it against your nose. “Ta da.” He shifted his weight slightly to grip your hip, thumb pinning the condom to you, and chuckling, finally, at the exasperated expression you were making.

(And all your fear, loosened convictions, vulnerability, frustrations, fucking _Star Trek_ lore—all of it was worth his laughter.)

“Consider me dazzled.”

**Author's Note:**

> his head is between your thighs when your attention is drawn to the fireplace. the cat has stuck her head in the coffee mug.
> 
> a link to that life-changing picture macauley culkin posted: [enjoy](https://www.instagram.com/culkamania/p/BpQxEmogDcU/?hl=en)


End file.
